Joseph Smagorinsky describes his youthful interest in weather, early education atNew York University (NYU) and the Air Force Cadet Program. He mentions a number of others involved in the War Course who continued on to prominence in meteorology and other fields. He discusses Carl-Gustaf Rossby's impact on the War Course, and talks about his forecasting work for a bombing group after receiving his commission. He reviews his education in the masters program at NYU under Bernhard Haurwitz and Hans Panofsky and his thesis on determining the divergence fields. He describes meeting Jules Charney at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and comments on his work with Harry Wexler at the Weather Bureau. He mentions the controversy between Soviet and US scientists regarding the influence of solar flares. He then describes his PhD work at the Institute for Advanced Study on a two-level primitive equation model and discusses the Phillips-Charney baroclinic model. He then reviews the organization of JNPWU and GCRS, and details Francis Reichelderfer's leadership style as well as his own. He details the recruiting a number of scientists for modeling, including Syukuro Manabe and Douglas Lilly, and talks about adding hurricane and mesoscale modeling to other fields. He comments on the computer technology changes that affected the Weather Bureau's location, and the choice of Princeton as a location for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). He describes the executive committee of AMS, and the management style of Ken Spengler. He mentions key staff additions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and discusses J. D. Mahlman's leadership. Finally, Smagorinsky reflects on the success of GFDL and his own legacy.